Executive functions in universal design for learning: moving towards inclusive education

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to understand the way in which executive functions are promoted in students by analyzing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, guidelines and checkpoints. After having performed a content analysis of such material, the results show that a little over half of the 31 checkpoints address the 12 executive functions being considered, the most prominent being: feedback response, planning, metacognition and organisation. Among the three brain networks represented in UDL, in particular, cognitive control has a more relevant presence in the strategic and affective networks, which indicates the importance given to teachers promoting that students learn how to anticipate, structure and decide their learning actions, and how students can rebuild their experience and learning, through reflection, revision and improvement processes. It is concluded that UDL not only constitutes a framework that enhances improvement towards barrier elimination to students’ learning and participation, but it also provides guidance for classroom practices that can improve the executive ability of students as long as there is encouragement to develop the affective dimension and its internal management within the learning context.

KEYWORDS:

• Executive functions
• cognitive control
• universal design for learning
• inclusive education

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

María-Dolores García-Campos. PhD in Education Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid. Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Department of Education Sciences, Area of Didactics and School Management, University of Alcalá (UAH), Spain. [email protected]

She has been a member of the Programme for Teacher Training at UAH for almost a decade. Her current teaching practice both at the undergraduate and master’s levels is focused on the scope of innovation and educational research. She is the Coordinator at the Project for Teaching Innovation Generating Spaces for Dialogic Reflection in the Training of Teachers at UAH. She is a member of the research team ‘FIT:Formar, Indagar, Transformar [Train, Search, Transform]’ where she has developed studies related to competence assessment in higher education, educational attention to university students with functional diversity and the development of Universal Design for Learning in schools. Other research interests are university teaching and gerontologic education, topics on which she has been the supervisor of several doctoral thesis. Current line of research: teacher training for inclusion and innovation through dialogic reflection.

Cristina Canabal. Ph.D. in Psychopedagogy, Complutense University of Madrid. Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Department of Education Sciences, Area of Didactics and School Management, University of Alcalá (UAH), Spain.

She is a member of the research team «FIT:Formar, Indagar, Transformar [Train, Search, Transform]» and the innovation team ‘Innovación curricular y aprendizaje crítico [Curriculum innovation and critical learning]’. She has been involved in the development of research projects related to the inclusion of deaf students in pre-school education, university accessibility for people with disabilities, the application of Universal Design for Learning and competence assessment in higher education, among others. Her research interest focus on educational innovation and the professional development of teachers. For 12 years she has collaborated with the Programme for Teacher Training as well as in the Ph.D. programme for Planning and Educational Innovation at UAH. She is currently teaching several courses in the Degree for Pre-School Teaching and the Master’s for Teaching Hispanic Language and Culture for primary and secondary education teachers and is currently developing a project for teaching innovation entitled ‘Generating spaces for dialogic reflection in teacher training’.

Carmen Alba-Pastor. Ph.D. in Education. Full Professor, Faculty of Education, Department of Didactics and School Management, Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Spain. [email protected]

Her educational background combines training in new technologies applied to education and attention to diversity. She has been the director at the Complutense Observatory of Accessibility to Higher Education and the Microsoft-Complutense Chair of Accessibility to Education. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University and at the College of Education at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Her line of research focuses on the accessibility of education for all students from the perspective of diversity, through curriculum and technological resources. From her stay at Wakefield's Center for Applied Special Technologies (CAST), Massachusetts (USA) she develops her work on Universal Design for Learning in collaboration with this centre, a field of research that is recently gaining ground and which has carried out projects, publications, and training of researchers and teachers.

She is a member of the University Network of Research and Educational Innovation (REUNI+D). She is currently directing EducaDUA, a space dedicated to research, training and dissemination of Universal Design for Learning in Spanish.

ORCID

María-Dolores García-Campos http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2223-4575

Cristina Canabal http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1081-6778

Carmen Alba-Pastor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2569-143X

Additional information

Funding

This article partially introduces and analyses the results of a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation regarding the ‘Application of Universal Design for Learning by means of the use of digitally accessible materials: implications for literacy in Primary Education and teacher education-DUALECTIC’ (Ref. EDU2011-24926), within the National R+D+I Plan 2008–2011. Sub-programme of Fundamental Research Projects 2011-2014.